


Bridge Variations: Attraction

by kerithwyn



Series: Quantum Entanglements [10]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-25
Updated: 2011-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:15:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerithwyn/pseuds/kerithwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia tries to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bridge Variations: Attraction

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Post-s3 finale.
> 
> Notes: "Bridge Variations" fic, spinning off from "Worlds Collide" in the Quantum Entanglements series. Immediately follows "Connection."

Olivia composes herself on the tiny cot and tries to calm her mind, hoping for peaceful sleep despite the hum of the machine and all the events of the day. She can feel the machine around the edges of her consciousness, not actively trying to break her interference with its workings but detectable in that part of her mind she's come to associate with her fluctuating abilities.

It's been an unbelievable day, seeing the other Olivia and all the other alternates. Especially Charlie and Lincoln, who'd been so much a part of her borrowed life on the other side.

She'd thought about them a lot, after she escaped back to her own world.

Charlie...remembering Charlie is difficult. He'd been the agent in charge on her very first FBI op, a sting on some Irish smugglers, and so green Kermit would've been embarrassed for her. With four words he'd put her at ease: he saw her uncertainty and said "You're gonna be fine," and she was, simple as that. She'd been happy to be assigned to an office with such an experienced agent and one she already trusted.

The other version of him has a scar on his face and isn't married and--she *knows* this--really enjoyed the sex with both his partners. It makes her wonder about her Charlie, who never gave a hint about such personal things.

She never saw Charlie that way, not really. He was completely bound up in Sonia. She's seen their wedding videos, she knows how much in love with each other they were. She and Charlie were strictly professional, always, except when he was ribbing her about her apparent lack of romance (even though he knew about John, he kept her secret) or she was consoling him after a rare fight with Sonia. On the verge of death, monsters in his blood, he was still looking out for her. When she thinks of him she remembers him lying on the stretcher, his only concern for her. "Don't get hurt for me."

She's tearing up, thinking about her friend. His double is kind in the same ways, steady and calming. Talking to him was a lot like having her Charlie back, and she's grateful to him for the opportunity to feel that presence again.

Thinking about Lincoln is not calming at all.

After she came back, Olivia had nearly looked up his doppelganger before she decided it wouldn't be fair. She'd formed her opinions about him already, had expectations he could never meet. It's purely irony that her consciousness was submerged under Bell's possession when Agent Lee was introduced to Fringe Division, and afterward she'd decided it was probably for the best.

She knows too much about Lincoln Lee. She knows what he likes to eat, and how he kisses, and how his hair looks when he wakes up in the morning before the product goes in. She knows the sports teams he follows (half of which don't exist on her world) and about his brother, and how his father's death is still a quiet, soul-deep hurt.

She wonders if Agent Lee in Hartford would make the same sound as a male lover thrusts into him.

She gasps a little, the memories are so strong, the images so intense. Her body remembers the sex between the three of them, had woken her up more than once with the feel of ghostly kisses dancing across her skin. Her body remembers two men, but when she wakes, it's not Charlie she's thinking about.

She's been alone for so long, since John died. She...wants Lincoln. She wants him, wants something for herself, even if it's transitory and their worlds separate again. It's inappropriate and dangerous and reckless and she wants him.

He's right across the room, too close, not close enough.

Olivia turns on the cot, resolutely putting her back to the room, trying to ignore the ache between her thighs. It's not the time, even less the place. He's not even from her world and she'd barely managed a romance when her partner was working right beside her. And it's *Liv* he's in love with, she has to remember that. Everything she shared with him was just spillover, a deception foisted on both of them.

He doesn't want her, he wants Liv. Who is now engaged to Frank, her mind whispers, so she's lost her claim. But she knows--or thinks she knows--Lincoln well enough to believe he's not that inconstant. The depth of his feeling for her double is obvious and Olivia is not going to be a substitute again.

She--they have too much work to do here to be distracted, anyway. It won't be the first time she's sublimated her desires into her job and it probably won't be the last.

All her wishes to the contrary, she can't see any other way this could be.


End file.
